


are you going to age with grace?

by lesbinej



Series: tumblr kiss prompts TWO! [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, bruh moment for all of us, this is noticeably shorter than the others but just smile and nod ok, this was HHHEEEWWWOOOO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 16:08:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21200402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbinej/pseuds/lesbinej
Summary: ganseycore said: ronsey + 15 or 55!! :P15. a kiss on the back(title oblivion/bastille)





	are you going to age with grace?

Gansey is familiar with most emotions that go through his head—most intimately, the subconscious  _ need  _ to have something more, some higher purpose, a drive, a life worth living. 

This is a subtype of that, right now, but he’s not sure what he would call it. Yearning, maybe, or hope, or just simply want. His soul aches a little, watching Ronan stare back at him while he’s leaning against the doorframe, spectacles sliding down his nose, the three in the morning drowsiness blurring not only his vision, but his thoughts. Ronan is facedown, bright blue eyes piercing him like ice, peering at him from the corner of his eye.

Most prominently, his back is open to the air—or as open as it can be while it’s wrapped in gauze. 

“Does it hurt?” Gansey asks, quiet. “ _ Did  _ it?”

The silence is oppressive, thick and heavy. Then, Ronan’s voice, as ragged as ever. “I didn’t even feel it.”

Gansey knows he’s telling the truth—he’s Ronan, after all, and it was against Ronan’s nature to lie. It was inconducive to his soul. But it was also unlike Ronan to tell the whole truth, and he had developed a skill as of late of telling Gansey just enough to ease him, but not enough that Gansey actually had any idea what was going on with him. 

It feels like Ronan is slipping away from him, thread between his fingers, water in his hands, smoke floating away, and try as he might, Gansey couldn’t bridge the space between them. 

But this time, just this time, Gansey doesn’t press him further on it.

“Can you even reach it?”

Ronan pauses, then shakes his head to the side just slightly. 

“I can’t get the damn jelly on it.” Ronan’s voice is flat. 

Gansey sighs, running a hand through his hair that has long since shed its daytime combed look, the bridge of his nose starting to ache from the pressure of his wireframes. He takes them off under the pretense of wiping the lenses on his tee-shirt, but some part of his brain just finds it hard to see right now. See the person in front of him that he barely recognizes anymore. 

He sits down on the bed. Ronan doesn’t move. 

There must be a spell, or some magic working on the room, because Gansey finds that if he opens his mouth to form words, his voice isn’t there. Like the mermaid in the Hans Christian Anderson story—he traded his voice for a prince, and now he watches helplessly. 

If Gansey is the mermaid, then he wonders how the story would’ve changed if the mermaid knew her fate all along. 

Wordless, he takes the tub of petroleum jelly on Ronan’s sidetable, twisting the lid open and peering at how full it is. Of course, Ronan only got the tattoo last night, so it’s not like he’s even had a chance to apply any yet. 

Ronan doesn’t move when Gansey takes the gauze wrapping his body and unravels it, gently, with prying and shaking fingers that don’t really have any idea what they’re doing. Boy Scouts and kayaking and backpacking across Europe certainly taught him how to dress wounds, but they didn’t teach him how to deal with the knot in his throat at the idea of doing it to someone as close to Gansey as his iris is to his pupil.

The bandages fall away with careful tugging. Gansey has to fight to not audibly gasp at the wonderful and terrible blend of black ink and raw, red skin before him—more ink than skin, if he’s being honest. It’s all swollen and tender and not bleeding, but it looks like it did at some point, and Gansey’s not sure if it’s supposed to be cracked and shedding, but it is. 

“Is it supposed to do that?” Gansey peels off a bit of dead skin to no reaction. 

“Yes.”

With a sharp intake of breath, Gansey dips two fingers into the jar of petroleum jelly, carefully beginning to smooth it out at the base of Ronan’s neck. He pretends not to notice Ronan’s entire back shudder at the contact. He pretends his hair didn’t stand on end for the same reason.

It’s a charged moment. A silent one made ever the more so by Ronan’s face turned away from him, by the slow, methodical contact of skin on skin, by the only sound being their breathing that, for some reason, is the loudest possible thing in that particular place and time. 

It’s silent. It’s deafening. 

Without much of a thought process to deter him from doing so, Gansey’s motions, methodical application of the jelly slows, and he leans in slow, slow, slow. He closes his eyes as his lips barely touch the skin between Ronan’s shoulders, just where there’s a space between the ink, feeling the warm, raw, angry skin to his mouth. 

Slow. Gentle. 

Ronan doesn’t say anything, but Gansey feels his back tense up, and then after a moment, relax again. Their breathing together is still the loudest thing in the room. Gansey swears his heartbeat in his ears is louder. The wires of his glasses push into his nose. 

Gansey leans back and finishes treating Ronan’s tattoo—returning with considerably shakier hands than before. He wonders if Ronan will say anything. He wonders if they will even speak of it. 

They don’t. 

  
  



End file.
